Headway Video Site by John Haydon

Lately I have been sending people to get hooked up with the Headway theme. It’s latest version has an incredible visual editor. No more knowing CSS or code!

John Hayden has just come out with Headway Video site. A perfect resource for tutorial videos on Headway. Check it out here.

And if you decide you would like to purchase Headway, please consider our affiliate link on the right side of this page.

8 Recent Thoughts on WordPress

Hey, you may already know this, but WordPress is my life. Yes, I work with it on a daily basis. And no, I don’t know everything. But I enjoy finding those solutions to problems I have yet to conquer. So, just for the heck of it, here are eight thoughts I am having right now on WordPress as I sit here.

1. Themes are a constant challenge. Their coding and CSS isn’t always obvious. Still convinced it’s worth paying for one.
2. Permalinks are great. But if you move a site, and you suddenly start getting 404 errors on all of your pages, except your homepage, it can be a permalink problem. Simply go in and reset to default, save, then reset your custom permalink. That may just solve the problem.
3. Bluehost is still my favorite hosting site. Three issues this week, all resolved within 15 minutes via the 24/7 chat.
4. Nothing more gratifying then helping someone on Twitter solve a WordPress issue by sending them to a blog post I did.
5. Looking forward to the WordPress workshop I’ll be presenting tomorrow, WordPress and the 3 Bears – Themes, Plugins and Widgets.
6. Blogging is not dead.
7. Cringe when other so-called WordPress developers and “experts” say you can create yourself an awesome online presence in just a few hours.
8. Still don’t like the over-used cliches rockstar or sucks in any kind of reference to WordPress, or as a matter of fact, anything in life.

So, a bit of meandering, but just imagine what all my thoughts are in a day’s time!

Excluding categories in the sub-navigation bar

Just a quick tip this AM.

If you have a theme that has a sub-navigation bar for categories, often they have a theme setting on which categories you can include or not in the bar. But if they don’t, here is a few steps to ensure certain one’s won’t appear…

First, you need to find out the number ID for each category you want to exclude. An easy way of doing this it to go to your category list page under “posts”, then run your cursor over the page to identify the number. Look at the bottom of your browser page and you will see a url with the number at the end.

Now go into your appearance menu, and choose the editor. On the left hand find your file “header (header.php) and open it.

Look for this code:

<?php wp_list_categories(‘orderby=name&title_li=&depth=2′); ?>

Replace it with this

<?php wp_list_categories(‘orderby=name&title_li=&depth=2&exclude=1,2,3‘); ?>

or you can use this to select only the categories you want to appear

<?php wp_list_categories(‘orderby=name&title_li=&depth=2&include=1,2,3‘); ?>

Just remember, if you aren’t comfortable with coding, make sure you have everything exact, no extra spaces and no “,” after the last category number. To be safe, copy the whole files text into a text window as a backup. Good luck!

Will the new theme Headway take the place of Thesis?

Just a quick post, as the talk on Twitter, and elsewhere, is the new theme Headway. I’ve yet to really take the time to go through it, but at first glance it’s pretty impressive.

So instead of rehashing what has been said, check out the Headway site and John Haydon, social media marketer, on why he made the switch from Thesis to Headway.

I Survived My 2.8 Update!

Just had to do a quick post as I finally made the move to update to version 2.8. From past experience, I have found it useful not to jump on the bandwagon and update the minute the new version comes out. It’s pretty much my practice across the board with most hardware and software.

I did take the time to read other horror stories via Twitter and LinkedIn, took note of all the disappointments and frustrations, and basically, sat back and waited. Nearly 30 days later, with some of the bugs worked out, on the day after the 4th of July, I decided to take the plunge.

I anticipated similar fireworks and explosions that had been a constant for the past two days.

Fortunately, it didn’t happen.

Like a good WordPress neurotic, I:

• backed up my files (although I do use WP-Dbmanager plugin for auto updates)
• turned off all of my plugins and updated them — several had updated versions for 2.8, lucky me (and yes all 14 plugins)
• clicked my auto install update
• activated plugins again
• and presto, my site worked like a charm, and 2.8 was active

I must note that we do use a premium theme from StudioPress that survived the update without a glitch.

(Heavy sigh). Now it’s off to update client sites. So far 3 updated, and things are good.

If you updated recently, let me know how it went for you!

A Peek at Some WordPress Beta 2.8 Features

WordPress Beta 2.8 has been out for a bit and I have finally taken some time to look at the new features. There’s some good stuff there! I won’t take the time to go through them all, but here are some that are worth highlighting.

THEMES

Now you can upload themes through the admin panel. In 2.7 and older, you needed to use FTP clients. And since there are a lot of WordPress users out there that don’t get “ftp” they limited themselves to the preinstalled themes. And an added benefit: now you can browse themes and search via keywords, and also apply filters too based on width, colours and columns. In addition the management of themes has improved. Before, you had to select the theme you wanted, and then either press activate or close after viewing a preview of the theme. Now you get options to activate immediately if you want, and also to delete the theme if you want as well.

WIDGETS AND PLUGINS

Although there isn’t any major change to the widget view, it it a lot cleaner and easier to use. As far as plugins, you can now edit them from within your editor. If a plugin is not working well, and you have the know how in coding, you can tweak it in order to get it working correctly.

COMMENTS

The new option to edit individual comments from the edit post selection saves a bit of time to do the standard delete, spam and reply to comments.

DASHBOARD

Again, just a bit making things a bit easier, you can now change the look of your dashboard and can set the number of columns that you want to be shown. Anything from one to four columns is allowed.

NOTE: If you are on the free WordPress.com, some of the features are not available.

So that’s just a quick preview. There is a whole bunch of other changes and improvements, but for most WordPress users, these are the one’s that will be more obvious. Not sure when we are looking at for the full release, but the Beta version does seem pretty stable. In any case, it’s just around the corner.

WordPress Themes – Free Vs. Paid

 

A couple posts ago I talked about the basics of a theme. Now let’s talk about the free versus paid. 

If you use WordPress, you know how many free themes are out there —literally hundreds. There are a lot of good ones, and some that are okay. If you are using yours for a blog, the choices are endless, depending on your needs. But if you are choosing WordPress as a platform for your website, you may want to consider the benefits of a paid theme. 

Now don’t get me wrong. Again, there are plenty of good free themes out there, and I’m not slamming any of them.

But, let’s look at what you may get with a paid theme:

You get what you pay for. Hey, that’s life. I don’t need to explain this one. In fact you will find that many of the “free” theme developers, have paid one’s as well. Get the point?

More bells and whistles. Yes, the paid themes will be more widget-friendly. They may already have a lot in place that you don’t even need to bother adding. 

Support. Here’s a big one. Again, someone that offers a theme for free, how much time can they give to supporting that theme. Sure, they may have a forum on their site, but still the opportunity of being able to contact someone when you need them, is so much more beneficial.

Updates. Another biggie! When WordPress does its updates (and they can be often), this can send your theme into oblivion. I’ve seen it happen with clients. Sites that offer paid themes have a bit more reason to make sure that their themes will work with the next update. In fact, many get hold of the “beta” version of the next update, just so they can  be ready!

So the choice is yours. Just give it a bit of thought as you choose your next theme. What do you want it to do for you? Think long term.

Of course you can always change midstream and that works will with blogs. But a complicated website — changing the theme can cost you time, money and several ongoing headaches! 

Here are just a few links to some great paid themes:

WooThemes

ithemes.com

Studio Press

Again, just a few. Look around, ask around. I’m sure you will find just what you need.